I get the desire for MOAR coverage but this comes across as slightly ungrateful.
Football carries the day here. Basketball has a smaller but enthusiastic following, maybe closer to football when it's really good. Hockey, baseball, and softball are well into the "fringe" category of fandom, honestly. And they've managed some coverage into sports and events beyond that. It's pretty remarkable.
And yet, resources and time are not unlimited. If they haven't followed and covered lacrosse closely enough to write anything meaningful about it, what are you asking for? A passing mention in a hockey article? That moves the needle for you?
Between cheeseburgers, Stalions, national championships, and a basketball coaching change and near complete roster turnover, plus a Kickstarter for a football season retrospective, it feels a little demanding to keep asking for stories about fringe sports they may not have any attention to devote to.
I feel like the speculation over which guys might sign has been somewhat overly optimistic over the last few years - seems like we talk ourselves into the best-case scenarios, saying "this team is already loaded with defensemen" or "that team wants to tank for another season or two so why would they add young talent right now", only to have those players sign anyway.
Not sure if it means anything, but it has generally worn away any of my own optimism over any players with professional prospects returning to the hockey program. I'm just going to assume they're gone, and if anyone does return, it'll be a happy surprise.
My understanding is that Michigan only allows a maximum of 60 credit hours to transfer, which means Davis would no longer be on track to graduate on time, rendering him academically ineligible.
I actually played HS ball with his Dad way back in the day so know him to be from some good mid-Michigan family stock and I know from his HS Coach he is a good kid/monster (good kind).
Dude, you're the insider, go find out and tell us.
That's not confirmed, is it? Only that he's entered the portal.
I did see a rumor that part of his dissatisfaction with Ole Miss was the coaches insisting he remain at CB and not letting him play WR, and that he'd be looking to play WR wherever he lands next. We could use both, honestly, so still feels like a take.
I can't fault any of his individual decisions, regardless of the optics. Portaling out on a coaching change is totally reasonable. Being interested enough in the Dusty May hire and the lack of guards to stick around is totally reasonable. Realizing May had put together enough guards to return GWIII to a garbage-time role and deciding to look elsewhere is totally reasonable.
Mildly disappointed as I think he could be a decent player as an upperclassman, but doesn't feel like a loss that we'll be cursing down the road.
I was going to add the "he down there somewhere" joke but then I looked at the current WR room on the Pats roster. Literally only recognized a single guy (JuJu Smith-Schuster).
That's questionable at best. We can't know for sure since they didn't all throw at the combine, but JJ hit 61 MPH, just 1 MPH less than Joe Milton, and is one of only a handful of QB's to throw 60 MPH or faster.
So if Penix, Maye, and Williams all have stronger arms than JJ, that means either they also have stronger arms than Milton which....nah, or they are somewhere between JJ and Milton which is a negligible difference.
Only QBs to throw 60+ MPH at the NFL Combine
Joe Milton 62 MPH Josh Allen 62 MPH JJ McCarthy 61 MPH Baker Mayfield 60 MPH Bryan Bennett 60 MPH Logan Thomas 60 MPH
This is not a number that is predictive to NFL Success at all, but goes to show the type of Velocity McCarthy has. https://t.co/yhepaHCixg
My exact thought. Pretty sure Mike's eyes weren't still on the QB as he was punching the ball loose (and if they were...well, that's even more impressive).
The answer is probably none, but I'm curious to see if any of the UM portalers might just be testing the waters ahead of the May 1 deadline to see if there are any paths to more playing time/NLI/whatever, and may still return if they don't find what they want.
Strictly rumor mill material, but someone over on the Victors board was hinting that another roster spot was opening up. When asked for clarification, they said they considered both Burnett and Jace to be gone, but didn't make clear whether that meant another spot was opening up in addition to Burnett and Jace, or if the spot opening up was one of Burnett and Jace.
What? We're bringing in another guard and the guards already on the roster aren't immediately transferring out because they might have to compete for minutes???
I can't even get that working. I repeatedly tried to embed an image in the Sam Walters thread and every time I either previewed or saved the image, it just reverted the html code to a single <img> tag with no actual reference to the image location.
Here's minus Rooths, and plus Goldin, Walters, and Pippen (not sure why it lists him as recruit #136, but I definitely added Pippen from the recruits list).
EDIT: What the heck, why can't I embed images now?
EDIT: No clue why I suddenly can't get any images to work. Tried both using the image uploader/selector, as well as just adding <img src="imagesourcepath.jpg"></img> into the source itself. Just gonna share an imgur link for now:
Again, not a matter of kids being "okay with potentially losing credits." If not enough credits transfer, they won't be on time to graduate and will therefore be academically ineligible for athletics.
The larger point of the coach understanding the academic requirements stands, but the specific argument that it's just up to the whims of the students does not.
Yeah, I don't get the whole debbie-downer attitude. Nobody is suggesting next year's roster will be a great team, or that Juwan didn't pull any talent.
What people are excited about is that May is having to quickly put together a roster, and thus far has managed to sign a number of players that make sense in terms of roster construction and his style of play. Sure, there are expectations of better talent in years to come, but it's not silly to be happy that the year zero rebuild is going about as well as could be reasonably hoped.
Although he has been in college for four years, he has not yet graduated from FAU. Very hard for non-grad transfers to get into Michigan unless they are from the Ivy League (EX: Wolf)
Teammate CJ Noland: "He's a tremendous person one, and a tremendous player second — having him back on the court for our team means a lot. I mean, he's the leader, he's the voice, he's everything for the team. Having him back is just that extra strength and that extra big brother out there that you'll see on the court out there fighting with you."
UNT coach Ross Hodge: "He has always had such a heart for other people. He always celebrates other people so well. It's only fitting because of how his heart is rooted in serving other people. It's only fitting that he's the all-time winningest player here. He's made his career about helping other people."
[...]
Teammate Jason Edwards: "Rubin's leadership means the world with so many new players. He thinks like coach Hodge and is like a guide to everything. His voice carries a lot of weight. He's been a part of championship teams and knows how to win. It's been a blessing for me to have Rubin, who plays the same position, in my corner."
Teammate Aaron Scott: "Rubin is one of the smartest players I have ever played with. He always knows what's going on. When I need help with something, I go to him."
UNT coach Ross Hodge: "That's what makes Rubin's story so awesome. In the world of college athletics, you don't see many players come in, stay four years and go through the natural evolution of growing from a role player to a starter to an impact player and then a fringe all-league player."
Generally agree, though after one mostly-injured year and another year of very good but not quite great, Nazar seemed a stronger candidate to return than would be typical of a first rounder. Given some of his late-season play, if he feels he's ready, then you can't blame him for going.
Really? It's not like he's handing Washington the starting job. He was a reasonably highly ranked recruit and can fill a role as a garbage time 4th guard while he develops.
Read back through some of Matt EM's bb recruiting posts...high school talent (and therefore recruiting rankings) is what it was 10 years ago or even 5 years ago. For a number of reasons, there seems only be a small handful of top level recruits per year, and it tails off pretty quickly after that into a much bigger pool of players that are more difficult to project.
100% honesty, and rivalry aside, I'm pretty damned impressed by Ryan Day achieving this level of success as a kid growing up in a single parent household and dealing with the trauma of a parental suicide. That's incredible. He should absolutely be proud of that. And his openness about that situation and his support of mental health should be applauded.
But holy smokes, dude cannot stop himself from walking into these comments. You lost three in a row. You called out Lou friggin Holtz in a post game interview. You stuck a big "Toughness" sign or whatever up on the wall. Now you lost a coach to Michigan and are trying to frame it as replacing him with a coach who didn't grow up in a football family because that insinuates that those who did are somehow less?
My man, get yourself and your team into the submarine and start yapping after you beat Michigan.
I'm in for this one. Truth be told, I was always interested but never pulled the trigger on HAIL before, because I just assumed that the season would be disappointing in some way, and I didn't want a physical representation of the failure to meet all hopes. BPONE and all that.
This is different. They did that. Business is finished. I want this on my bookshelf, where I can pull it down and reminisce whenever the mood strikes.
Honestly, at this point I'm pretty suspicious that Harbaugh's entire Michigan tenure, including three straight wins over Ohio State and culminating in a national championship, was entirely about gaining an advantage in this year's NFL draft.
Recent Comments
I get the desire for MOAR coverage but this comes across as slightly ungrateful.
Football carries the day here. Basketball has a smaller but enthusiastic following, maybe closer to football when it's really good. Hockey, baseball, and softball are well into the "fringe" category of fandom, honestly. And they've managed some coverage into sports and events beyond that. It's pretty remarkable.
And yet, resources and time are not unlimited. If they haven't followed and covered lacrosse closely enough to write anything meaningful about it, what are you asking for? A passing mention in a hockey article? That moves the needle for you?
Between cheeseburgers, Stalions, national championships, and a basketball coaching change and near complete roster turnover, plus a Kickstarter for a football season retrospective, it feels a little demanding to keep asking for stories about fringe sports they may not have any attention to devote to.
Umm...no?
Adding my own thoughts about this announcement:
I feel like the speculation over which guys might sign has been somewhat overly optimistic over the last few years - seems like we talk ourselves into the best-case scenarios, saying "this team is already loaded with defensemen" or "that team wants to tank for another season or two so why would they add young talent right now", only to have those players sign anyway.
Not sure if it means anything, but it has generally worn away any of my own optimism over any players with professional prospects returning to the hockey program. I'm just going to assume they're gone, and if anyone does return, it'll be a happy surprise.
Then let's hope Chip Kelly snags him and we can watch Derrick Moore abuse him next season.
https://buckeyeswire.usatoday.com/2024/04/30/ohio-state-football-bruno-fina-chip-kelly-transfer-portal/
He's a redshirt junior. Not likely to work, even if we wanted to add him as a depth piece.
How many fakes we giving that 4.58 40 time?
https://www.hudl.com/profile/5428311/CJ-Charleston/about
My understanding is that Michigan only allows a maximum of 60 credit hours to transfer, which means Davis would no longer be on track to graduate on time, rendering him academically ineligible.
Welp. Fingers crossed Amorion Walker comes back.
Don't think he was replying to you.
Dude, you're the insider, go find out and tell us.
We were the only program with more than one.
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/search/search.fcgi?search=semaj
The timing is suspicious, maybe he didn't like what he saw in Seth's post.
Dang it, now we won't lead the nation in players whose name is "James" backwards.
Really could use one more athletic and switchable big wing/small forward to round things out, but that might be greedy.
That's not confirmed, is it? Only that he's entered the portal.
I did see a rumor that part of his dissatisfaction with Ole Miss was the coaches insisting he remain at CB and not letting him play WR, and that he'd be looking to play WR wherever he lands next. We could use both, honestly, so still feels like a take.
I can't fault any of his individual decisions, regardless of the optics. Portaling out on a coaching change is totally reasonable. Being interested enough in the Dusty May hire and the lack of guards to stick around is totally reasonable. Realizing May had put together enough guards to return GWIII to a garbage-time role and deciding to look elsewhere is totally reasonable.
Mildly disappointed as I think he could be a decent player as an upperclassman, but doesn't feel like a loss that we'll be cursing down the road.
Time for the dance of joy!
I was going to add the "he down there somewhere" joke but then I looked at the current WR room on the Pats roster. Literally only recognized a single guy (JuJu Smith-Schuster).
Signed with Ole Miss in January 2024.
So much lazy analysis at the bottom of that list. You can 100% tell who is doing their assessments by looking at box scores.
That's questionable at best. We can't know for sure since they didn't all throw at the combine, but JJ hit 61 MPH, just 1 MPH less than Joe Milton, and is one of only a handful of QB's to throw 60 MPH or faster.
So if Penix, Maye, and Williams all have stronger arms than JJ, that means either they also have stronger arms than Milton which....nah, or they are somewhere between JJ and Milton which is a negligible difference.
Wow, Alex wrote and published an entire article in 7 minutes after you requested it. Now that's service.
My exact thought. Pretty sure Mike's eyes weren't still on the QB as he was punching the ball loose (and if they were...well, that's even more impressive).
The answer is probably none, but I'm curious to see if any of the UM portalers might just be testing the waters ahead of the May 1 deadline to see if there are any paths to more playing time/NLI/whatever, and may still return if they don't find what they want.
Strictly rumor mill material, but someone over on the Victors board was hinting that another roster spot was opening up. When asked for clarification, they said they considered both Burnett and Jace to be gone, but didn't make clear whether that meant another spot was opening up in addition to Burnett and Jace, or if the spot opening up was one of Burnett and Jace.
Spent about 10 seconds pondering what possible connection Boynton has to McNamara.
What? We're bringing in another guard and the guards already on the roster aren't immediately transferring out because they might have to compete for minutes???
But hey, if Cason emulates Jones' tenacity, then perhaps in future years we can rightly call his defense Rubinesque.
I can't even get that working. I repeatedly tried to embed an image in the Sam Walters thread and every time I either previewed or saved the image, it just reverted the html code to a single <img> tag with no actual reference to the image location.
Anyone else playing with the Torvik Rostercast?
https://barttorvik.com/rostercast.php?run=1&team=Michigan
Here's minus Rooths, and plus Goldin, Walters, and Pippen (not sure why it lists him as recruit #136, but I definitely added Pippen from the recruits list).
EDIT: What the heck, why can't I embed images now?
EDIT: No clue why I suddenly can't get any images to work. Tried both using the image uploader/selector, as well as just adding <img src="imagesourcepath.jpg"></img> into the source itself. Just gonna share an imgur link for now:
https://imgur.com/a/uL3KxwT
So is he like a rich man's Will Tschetter?
Again, not a matter of kids being "okay with potentially losing credits." If not enough credits transfer, they won't be on time to graduate and will therefore be academically ineligible for athletics.
The larger point of the coach understanding the academic requirements stands, but the specific argument that it's just up to the whims of the students does not.
Bummers. I know there was some thought that he wasn't a great fit for Dusty's system, but I still liked him.
Yeah, I don't get the whole debbie-downer attitude. Nobody is suggesting next year's roster will be a great team, or that Juwan didn't pull any talent.
What people are excited about is that May is having to quickly put together a roster, and thus far has managed to sign a number of players that make sense in terms of roster construction and his style of play. Sure, there are expectations of better talent in years to come, but it's not silly to be happy that the year zero rebuild is going about as well as could be reasonably hoped.
Not making a new thread for this since it's just twitter rumors, but sharing here:
Literally the first two words of his comment.
We all hate that you're so negative, too.
Huh.
I think Dusty May cares about culture.
https://247sports.com/article/rubin-jones-commits-to-michigan-basketball-out-of-the-transfer-portal-get-to-know-the-new-wolverine-230591847/
Didn't see it mentioned anywhere in the thread, so just sharing that he's making his announcement at 4:30 PM ET, live on 247Sports.
Good news, plus we just picked up what seems like an impact defenseman transfer from ASU as well (next thread up).
Generally agree, though after one mostly-injured year and another year of very good but not quite great, Nazar seemed a stronger candidate to return than would be typical of a first rounder. Given some of his late-season play, if he feels he's ready, then you can't blame him for going.
Now I'm curious what the greatest discrepancy is between a good FT% and a poor 3% for any college player with a decent sample size.
Really? It's not like he's handing Washington the starting job. He was a reasonably highly ranked recruit and can fill a role as a garbage time 4th guard while he develops.
Read back through some of Matt EM's bb recruiting posts...high school talent (and therefore recruiting rankings) is what it was 10 years ago or even 5 years ago. For a number of reasons, there seems only be a small handful of top level recruits per year, and it tails off pretty quickly after that into a much bigger pool of players that are more difficult to project.
100% honesty, and rivalry aside, I'm pretty damned impressed by Ryan Day achieving this level of success as a kid growing up in a single parent household and dealing with the trauma of a parental suicide. That's incredible. He should absolutely be proud of that. And his openness about that situation and his support of mental health should be applauded.
But holy smokes, dude cannot stop himself from walking into these comments. You lost three in a row. You called out Lou friggin Holtz in a post game interview. You stuck a big "Toughness" sign or whatever up on the wall. Now you lost a coach to Michigan and are trying to frame it as replacing him with a coach who didn't grow up in a football family because that insinuates that those who did are somehow less?
My man, get yourself and your team into the submarine and start yapping after you beat Michigan.
I'm in for this one. Truth be told, I was always interested but never pulled the trigger on HAIL before, because I just assumed that the season would be disappointing in some way, and I didn't want a physical representation of the failure to meet all hopes. BPONE and all that.
This is different. They did that. Business is finished. I want this on my bookshelf, where I can pull it down and reminisce whenever the mood strikes.
Honestly, at this point I'm pretty suspicious that Harbaugh's entire Michigan tenure, including three straight wins over Ohio State and culminating in a national championship, was entirely about gaining an advantage in this year's NFL draft.